Sheriff Brown's Biographical Information

Bill Brown was elected as Santa Barbara County’s Sheriff-Coroner on November 7, 2006. Sheriff Brown began his law enforcement career in 1977 with the Pacifica Police Department in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1980 he transferred to the Inglewood Police Department. He served that Los Angeles County community until 1992, when he was selected to be chief of police for the City of Moscow, Idaho. In that position he was responsible for overseeing police operations for both the City of Moscow and the University of Idaho. In 1995, Brown was selected to be chief of police for the City of Lompoc, being only the eighth person to hold the title of police chief in that community since it incorporated in 1899. He led the Lompoc Police Department for the next eleven years until being elected to his present office.

Sheriff Brown earned a bachelor’s degree in management from the University of Redlands in 1987, and received a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Southern California in 1995. He was president of the 91st Class of the Delinquency Control Institute, and is a graduate of the Northwest Command College and the 169th Session of the FBI National Academy. He is a past president of the California Police Chiefs Association, former chairman of the Santa Barbara County Law Enforcement Chiefs Association, and former executive director of the Santa Barbara Regional Narcotic Enforcement Team. Sheriff Brown is active in the community, serving as an honorary board member for the North County Rape Crisis and Child Protection Center and Santa Barbara Domestic Violence Solutions, and as an advisory board member of the Anti-Defamation League.  He also is a steering committee member for both the Santa Barbara County Reentry Project and Santa Barbara’s “Fighting Back” (Against Alcohol & Drug Abuse), sits on the Lompoc Hospital District Board of Trustees, and is on the board of directors for the Pierre Claeyssens’ Veterans Museum and Library. 

Sheriff Brown is deeply committed to the philosophy of community policing and corrections, where peace officers and citizens work together to identify and seek long term solutions to problems relating to crime, fear of crime, neighborhood decay and quality of life. Sheriff Brown and his wife, Donna, have been married for 30 years and have three children.